The Captive V pp 1-27

p 3 | Russian ballet=Ballets Russes

p 3 | "Les douleur sont des folles/Et qui les écoute est encore plus fou."  Albertine hums this refrain from Biniou, by Hippolyte Guérin, music by Emile Durand (1830-1903). 

p 4 | "Une chanson d'adieu sort des sources troublées..."  From Pensée d'automne by Armand Silvestre, music by Jules Massenet, French opera composer, 1842-1912.

p 13 | Assuerus = Ahasuerus, King of Persia, in the play Esther, by Racine., here Act I, Scene 3


p 15 | Parc des Buttes Chaumont: 5th largest park in Paris, opened in 1867. The park took its name from the bleak hill on the site, which, because of the soil's chemical composition, was almost bare of vegetation; it was called Chauve-mont, or bare hill.

p 16 | coalheaver = one who feeds coal into a furnace

p 20 | Gomorrah: Sodom and Gomorrah were cities named in the Bible, the Torah and other religious texts, destroyed by God in fire and brimstone because of their lack of hospitality & wickedness. Proust here seems to be using it to refer to the  rampant lesbianism he imagined at Balbec.

 p 27 |  Arquebus : an early muzzle-loaded firearm, sensitive to humidity.

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 692-

p 703 | 1889 Exhibition = The Exposition Universelle of 1889 was a world's fair held in Paris from 6 May to 31 October 1889.











Sapphism in 19th century France

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 662-691

Berthe de Clinchamp,

p 666 | Aldonce de Guermantes is an invention. Because Louis VI (known as le Gros, 1081-1137), had an illegitimate younger half-brother, called Philippe de Mantes, he had himself crowned quickly in 1108 to ensure his own succession.

p 666 | The La Trémoilles became heirs to the Kings of Naples in 1605; their descent from the Comtes de Poitiers is uncertain. Uzès did not become a duchy until 1572.

p 667 | The first Duc de Luynes was created in 1619. The Choiseuls, the Harcourts, the La Rochefoucaulds... are families who traced their origins back to the 10th century. ...the Noailles ... the Montesquious, the Castellanes can be traced back to the 11th century.

p 667 | Vatefairefiche = va-te-faire-fiche means "Scram!" (Gotoblazes). Turning Cambremer into Cambremerde is a vulgarization of the name.

p 668 | Scènes de la vie de province is one of the major sections of Balzac's Comédie Humaine. La Muse du département is part of the Scènes de la vie de province; its heroine, Mme de la Baudraye, writes literary essays and has an adulterous love affair. Mme de Bargeton is a character in Illusions perdues, a provincial wife who becomes the lover of the young hero, Lucien de Rubempré. Mme de Mortsauf was the heroine of Le Lys dans la vallée, who overcomes her passion for the young Félix de Vandenesse and dies a saintly death.
p 672 | Berthe de Clinchamp, companion of the Duchesse d'Aumale, came eventually to run the Duc's household, and in 1899 published a memoir of him: Le Duc d'Aumale, prince, soldat.p 673 | In media stat virtus = virtue lies in the middle.

p 674 | ... M. Moreau, Morille, Morue...: Moreau can mean a horse's nosebag; a morille is a morel (mushroom); morue is a codfish.

p 681 | Subaltern = an officer in the British army below the rank of captain, especially a second lieutenant. Saint-Cyr = military academy where French Army officers are trained.

p 688 | Pont-l'Éveque: Éveque is French for "bishop." Childhood of Christ is an oratorio written by Berlioz between 1850 and 1854; L'Enchantement du Vendredi Saint, or The Good Friday Music forms part of Act III of Wagner's opera Parsifal, but is sometimes performed separately, especially at Easter.

King Louis IX

p 689 | Rue de Blancs-Manteaux: literally, White Mantles or White Friars, a Carmelite order.

p 690 | Saint Louis = Louis IX, King of France 1226-70, canonized in 1287.
 
p 690 | Felix de Rochegude's 20-volume work Promenades dans toutes les rues de Paris (1910). The street Charlus can't remember was the rue des Rosiers & "du Rozier'' later will become the name Bloch takes to hide his Jewishness. Though not a Jew, Rembrandt lived in the Amsterdam's Jewish quarter & painted Jewish subjects. Legend about a 13th century Jew convicted of burning a consecrated Host, which was itself miraculously preserved.

p 690 | According to Rochegude, this Louis I d'Orléans (1372-1407) was murdered by Jean sans Peur on coming out from supper with Isabeau de Bavière, his sister-in-law & mistress. The Duc de Chartres (1840-1910) was the grandson of Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orléans (also known as Philippe-Égalité, 1747-1793), and not obviously related to Charlus.

N.B. All entries based primarily based on Sturrock's notes.

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 639-662

p 638 | Tantus ab uno splendor = Such brilliance coming from one person. 

p 639 | Mort m'est vie = Death, to me, is life.

p 639 | In 1900, Sarah Bernhardt created the title role in Edmond Rostand's successful L'Aiglon. Jean-Sully Mounet (1841-1916), called Mounet-Sully, played Oedipus in the Roman arena at Orange (not Nîmes). 

p 640 | ...contre-de-quartes reminiscent of Molière: referring to the fencing lesson in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, a contre-de-quarte is a circular parrying movement of the sword.
 
p 643 | Mazagran = coffee laced with rum; gloria = a mixture of sweet coffee & rum or eau-de-vie.  Eugène Marin Labiche, French dramatist, 1815-88.  Os homini sublime dedit coelumque tueri:  "He has given man a face turned toward the sky," a line from Ovid's Metamorphoses.



p 644-45 | ...Archangel Raphael ... Tobias: this story is in the book of Tobit, in the Apocrypha.

p 657 | Verjuice = the juice from unripe grapes.

p 659 | Constant Coquelin, known as Coquelin aîné, a well-known actor (1841-1909).

p 660 | The Société des Bibliophiles Français was founded in 1820 of mainly aristocrats; the Union Club was founded in 1828 and was the most exclusive Paris club during the Second Empire.

p 661 | The Montgomery & Pembroke families were associated, as were the Chandos family & the Buckinghams. A Capel became Count of Essex in 1661, and Proust knew Berthe Capel in Paris. The Duc de Berry (1844-1910) was a member of the Orléans family.   

p 661 | Émilienne d'Alençon (Émilienne Andrée) was a celebrated courtesan around 1900, who dabbled in music & poetry & appeared with performing rabbits at the Folies-Bergère.

>p 661 | Ne sçais l'heure = I don't know the hour (of my death). It's pronounced like the name Saylor.

p 662 | Jean-Alexis Périer (1869-1954) created the role of Pelléas in Debussy's opera in 1902.  The Théâtre du Gymnase specialized in comedy; La Châtelaine was a comedy by Alfred Capus (1858-1922), a dramatist & journalist who was elected to the Académie Française in 1914.  Simone Frévalles, actress in La Châtelaine , as well as the company at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin.  Marie Magnier (1848-1913) made her debut in 1867 and played in many Paris theaters; Louis Baron (1870-1939), known as Baron fils to distinguish him from his actor father, was a well-known comic actor at the turn of the century.

p 663 | Yvette Guilbert (1867-1944) began her celebrated career as a chanteuse around 1885. Ernest Cornaglia (1834-1912), an actor who joined the company at the Théâtre de l'Odéon in 1880; Émile Dehelly (1871-1969) debuted at the Comédie-Française in 1890.

N.B. All entries based primarily based on Sturrock's notes.

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 625-639

p 625 |  Conservatoire de Paris had been located at Rue Bergère (rue du Conservatoire)  since 1784.

In 1911 le Conservatoire moved to rue de Madrid. Some historic photos are here.

device of Charles V

p 629 |  Plus Ultra Car'lus: Earl Rosenthal, in The Palace of Charles V in Granada  (1985), says the motto is associated with the Pillars of Hercules, which, in Greek mythology, were built by Hercules near the Straits of Gibraltar to mark the edge of the then known world. According to mythology the pillars bore the warning Nec plus ultra (also Non plus ultra, meaning "nothing farther beyond"), to warn sailors & navigators to go no farther. It is believed that the young Charles V adopted Plus Oultre as his motto at his advisor's suggestion, as a way to encourage him to ignore the ancient warning & instead take risks, surpass himself and go "farther beyond."

p 631 | The Rules of Duels (Code Duello)

p 632 | "Some Sunday morning... "": opening words of a 1902 popular song "Viens, Poupoule" by Félix Mayol. Listen & read here.

p 634 | "Spes mea" ("My hope"); "Exspectata non eludet" ("He will not disappoint hopes"); "J'attendrai" ("I shall wait"); "Memes plaisirs du mestre" ("The same pleasures as the master");
"Sustentant lilia turns" ("The towers support the lilies"); "Manet ultima caelo" ("The end belongs to heaven"); "Non mortale quodopto" ("I have the ambition of an immortal"); "Atavis et armis" ("By ancestors and by arms")

p 638 | "C'est mon plaisir" ("It is my pleasure"); "Tantus ab uno splendor" ("So much brilliance coming from one person"); "Condescendre n'est pas descendre" ("To condescend is not to descend"); "Mart (mort) m'est vie" ("Death to me is life")

• See also comments from The Cork-Lined Room blog.
• See also comments from the GoodReads blog

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 611-625

p 612 | "Esther heureuse...": the titles of three of the four sections of Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes.

p 612 | Rocambole was the hero of more than 30 adventure novels written by Alexis Ponson du Terrail (1829-71), as well as later writers. The adjective rocambolesque usually means a fantastic adventure.

p 612 | "...moult sorbonagre, sorbonicole et sorboniforme...": a scathing Rabelaisian way of referring to a pedantic doctor from the Sorbonne, perhaps translatable as "Sorbonnified, Sorbonniculous, and Sorbonniform."

p 612 | "The quart d'heure de Rabelais...": popular phrase meaning "the moment of reckoning." An explanatory  anecdote  from a comic incident from the writer’s life. "One day he was in Lyon and wanted to travel to Paris. He had no money and so he marked several sachets of sugar “Poison for the King” and left them lying prominently around. He was arrested and taken to Paris, thus getting a free ride. King Francis I laughed so hard when he heard about it that he happily paid for the trip." Literally, "the quarter-hour of Rabelais," which is amusingly echoed in Andy Warhol's "15 minutes of fame."

p 613 | "Chateaubriand aux pommes": Sturrock says this is "Chateaubriand steak served with apple," but I think the dish is really served with potatoes (pommes frites, pommes de terres...).

p 613 |  gnōthi seauton : Greek for "Know thyself."

p 613 | Jean-Martin Charcot, 19th century French neurologist.

p 614 | "...holy terror Ovid..." Ovid wrote "Materiam superabat opus" (Metamorphoses II, 5), or "The workmanship surpassed the material" (form over content).

Hanska by Delmont

p 614 | "Meudon... ": Meudon, now part of Paris, was the parish of which Rabelais was the curé; Ferney was the Genevan home of Voltaire; the Vallée-aux-Loups, near Sceaux, was where Chateaubriand lived for several years; Les Jardies was the name of Balzac's house in Villa d'Avray; the "Polish woman" was Mme Hanska, whom Balzac married in 1850, shortly before his death and the inspiration for many of his characters. (Sturrock)

p 614 | Hippolyte Taine complained in a well-known essay on Balzac, that the Comedie humaine contained too much that was morbid or unnatural, and did not meet his literary concepts of   "race, milieu, et moment." See his Wiki page for an interesting explanation.

p 617 | Zénaïde, French form of Zenaida, a feminine form of "Zeus."

p 618 | Diane de Maufrigneuse, main character in Balzac's novel Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan, part of the Comedie humaine. 

p 620 | "cut a dash" = (Br.) Be stylish or impressive in one’s dress or behavior, e.g. "The Foreign Secretary wanted to cut a dash in Brussels."

p 620 | Paul Thureau-Dangin (1837-1913) was a Catholic historian, member of the Académie française. Gaston Boissier (1823-1908) was a French classical scholar, and secretary of the Académie française.

p 620 | Boissier is a chocolatier, founded in 1827.

p 621 | ...40bis Boulevard Malesherbes...: For most of his life (until 1900) Proust lived at 9 boulevard Malesherbes, near the Madeleine church, where the family moved in 1873 after his brother Robert was born. Proust himself had lived with his parents at 9 Boulevard Malesherbes.  His maternal grandparents lived at 40bis rue du Faubourg-Poissonniere.

p 621 | Marc-Joseph-Edgar Bourdon Vatry (baron de, 1828-1891)

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 593-611

p 594 | tapette = a (feminine) noun with several meanings, often used informally to refer to someone as a homosexual.

p 596 | penates = Roman deities, household gods of the Romans & other Latin peoples. 

In proeliis non semper  means Not always in combat.
Non sine labore means Nothing is gained without effort  (motto of the Cardinal de Retz) (Sturrock)

p 596 | Hydrophobia, the historic name for rabies, especially a set of symptoms of its later stages, where the victim has difficulty swallowing, shows panic when presented with liquids to drink, and cannot quench its/their thirst.

p 604 | Parmi les hommes: means among men. Henry Roujon was an academic, essayist and novelist, elected member of the Académie française in 1911. The real title of the book was Au milieu des hommes (which also means among men or in the midst of men, and it was a collection of critical essays. (Storrock)

Roujon

p 606 | Joseph-Raymond, comte Fournier-Sarlovèze (1836-1916) was an adminstrator and art historian, who created a connoisseurs' club in 1904 called La Société artistiques des amateurs.

p 611 | "It's so beautiful...: the satanic Carlos Herrera, alias Vautrin, had "befriended," first Eugène de Rastignac (in Le Pere Goriot) and then Lucien de Rubempré, who is with him when they find themselves passing Rastignac; Tristesse d'Olympio is one of Victor Hugo's best-known and beautiful poems, in which he revisits the scenes where he first fell in love with his mistress, Juliette Drouet. (Sturrock)

Perhaps this will help: "Honoré de Balzac’s Gay Anti-Hero" (an essay by Robert W. Mack):

Nearly 200 years ago, the French novelist Honoré de Balzac created a remarkable character, Vautrin, a charming, hyper-masculine master criminal, and a man who loves men. In three of Balzac’s most popular novels an important part of the plot turns on Vautrin’s love for an exceptionally handsome, much younger man: 21-year-old Eugène de Rastignac in Père Goriot, twenty-year-old Lucien de Rubempré in the climactic scene of Lost Illusions and in A Harlot High and Low (Splendeurs et misères) and 27-year-old Théodore Calvi (nicknamed “Madeleine”), who doesn’t appear until the end of the last book, when Vautrin is around fifty, but who had also been involved with Vautrin a decade before, at the age of eighteen.

p 611 | The "man of taste" was Oscar Wilde, who in his essay "The Decay of Lying" wrote, "One of the greatest tragedies of my life is the death of Lucien de Rubempré in Splendeurs et misères."

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a French novelist and playwright. La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy) is the title of his multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy (1815–1848). The Comédie humaine consists of 91 finished works (stories, novels or analytical essays) and 46 unfinished works (some of which exist only as titles).

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 563-593

p 564 | terzo incomodo: third wheel

p 567 | Charles de Sévigné (1648–1713) was a French aristocrat and  soldier; also the son of French literary icon (and Mamma's favorite) Madame de Sévigné.

p 578 | Benjamin Godard (1849-95), a writer of successful operas; Proust found his music facile. (Storrock)

p 583 | Martingale: a strap, or set of straps, attached to the noseband or reins of a horse and at the other end to the girth. It is used to prevent the horse from raising its head too high.

p 587 | "Work and you will achieve fame...." Chateaubriand cites these words as having been written to him in 1798 by the Marquis Louis de Fontanes (1757-1821), a writer with whom he had become friendly during his exile in England. A collection of Napoleon's letters to Josephine was published in 1913 under the title Tendresses imperiales, or Imperial Tendernesses. (Sturrock)

p 593 | A Cartier gold vanity case might look something like this:

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 542-62

p 543 | cabinet puddings (diplomats) = biscuits soaked in rum or kirsch. See a recipe here.  (Sturrock)

p 549 | La Sanseverina is the spirited, sophisticated heroine of Stendhal's novel La Chartreuse de Parme. (Sturrock)

p 551 | "the Baronne de Rothschild" rose named in 1868 after Laure, wife of Baron Alphonse de Rothschild; "the Maréchale Niel" (actually "Maréchal Niel") pear named in 1864 after Adolphe Niel (1802-69). (Sturrock)

p 555 | Camille Stamati (1811-70), pianist and composer, and teacher of Saint-Saens.

bon Chrétien

p 556-57 | La Comtessed'Escarbagnas is a one-act comedy by Molière, in which the heroine is sent some bon Chrétien pears as a love offering by her suitor, M. Thibaudier. The other pear names that follow came from Elisabeth (not Emilie) de Clermont-Tonnerre’s cookbook, Almanach des bonnes choses de France (1920). (Sturrock)

p 562 | Calvados brandy

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 515-42

Bergson

p 520-22 | Émile Boutroux (1845–1921), eminent 19th century French philosopher of science & religion, and an historian of philosophy. Firmly opposed to materialism in science, he was a spiritual philosopher who defended the idea that religion and science are compatible, at a time when the power of science was rising inexorably. His work is somewhat overshadowed by Henri Bergson. Elected to the Academy of Moral & Political Sciences (1898) & the Académie française (1912). Henri Bergson (1859–1941), major French philosopher, convinced many that immediate experience & intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism & science for understanding reality. He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature and in 1930, France awarded him its highest honour, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d'honneur. (wiki) 
p 521 | "like a dulcimer" refers to a couplet from Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal: "Your memory, like uncertain fables, / Wearies the reader like a dulcimer." (Sturrock)

p 521 | Porphyry of Tyre (c. 234–c. 305 AD) was a Neoplatonic philosopher who edited & published the Enneads, the only collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. Plotinus (c.204/5 – 270) was a major philosopher of the ancient world. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas & he is of the Platonic tradition. Historians of the 19th century invented the term Neoplatonism and applied it to him & his philosophy, which was influential in Late Antiquity. Much of his biographical information comes from Porphyry's preface to the Enneads. (wiki)

p 525 | toque:  woman's small hat without a brim made in any of various soft close-fitting shapes. Here are some outfits made for motoring. 

p 524 | Footman.

p 524-25  | "Prosper, dear hope ...": a line from Racine's Esther, wrongly attributed here to Athalie. In French, "Prospérez, cher espoir d'une nation sainte." "Come, come, my daughters": "Venez, venez, mes filles."  They must be summoned": "il faut les appeler."

p 527 | Euryclea: In the Odyssey, when Ulysses returns to Ithaca in disguise, his nurse Euryclea recognizes him by a scar on his foot or leg.

p 528 | "... faulty restorations at Notre-Dame" refers to the restorations done by Viollet-le-Duc and others between 1844 and 1864. (Sturrock) Also see this excerpt about church painting & restorations.

p 528 | "...those objects . . . mantelpiece:" a reference to Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Purloined Letter," translated into French by Baudelaire, in which a much-sought incriminating letter lies unconcealed. Text is here. (Sturrock)

p 528 | Etruscan

p 534 | Epreville
 
p 535 | The Okeanides (or Oceanides) were 3000 goddess Nymphs who presided over the sources of earth's fresh-water, ranging from rainclouds to subterranean springs and fountains.

p 538 | Montsurvent

p 541 | Hadrian (d. 138 CE), 14th Emperor of Rome, built the Pantheon in Rome and Hadrian’s Wall in northern Britain.